The present invention generally relates to eyewear, such as rimless eyewear. More specifically, the present invention relates to a tool for facilitating the adjustment of rimless eyewear. These tools are commonly known as “adjusting pliers.”
Rimless eyewear is very well known in the art. Such rimless eyewear necessitates that the hardware (e.g. temples, hinges, bridge, etc.) be attached directly to the lens using, for example, rivets, clips, posts and the like. Once the hardware is installed, there is a need to adjust various parts of rimless eyewear to custom fit it to the wearer. In the prior art, the rimless frames are typically gripped and twisted and bent by hand to achieve the desired location of the parts of the eyewear. Such bending and twisting places significant pressure and strain on the lens, particularly in the region where the hardware is installed. For example, the lens about the hardware holes is particularly susceptible to cracks and damage during this custom adjustment of the lenses.
Therefore, there is a need to be able to effectively grip rimless frames while they are being adjusted to avoid damage to the hardware or the lenses. Various attempts in the prior art have tried to grip and capture the lens itself about the hardware holes to take the pressure and strain off of the lens in this area and improve the precision of adjustment over simply adjusting the eyewear by hand. Typically, these prior art tools are in the form of adjusting pliers where one side of the tool includes a plastic pad with the other side of the tool being a metal pronged fork-like structure to communicate with the lens on opposing sides of the hardware and their associated holes. However, these prior art tools cannot easily accommodate lenses of differing sizes and shapes and the metal fork-like structure can easily damage the lenses.